Microsoft Corp. announced the beta availability of Microsoft Office Live. Designed for ease of use and affordability, the online services are designed to give small businesses the same advantages as larger enterprises by getting them up and running on the Internet quickly, easily and inexpensively, according to Microsoft.

“The Internet is crucial to running a successful business today, and companies that don’t have at least an online presence risk missing out,” said Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division. “With Microsoft Office Live, we are making online services available for small businesses to create an enterprise-like IT infrastructure for them without the management requirements. Our goal is to make it easy and affordable for small businesses to have a more customizable Internet-based solution.”

Office Live will be available in three versions, all of them free for the Beta release:

Office Live Basics, which includes a Web site, domain name, oodles of templates, Web site analytics, and five e-mail accounts, will be advertising-supported and free of charge to customers.
Office Live Collaboration includes business applications for managing customers and employees.

Office Live Essentials rolls up the functionality of both plus 50 e-mail accounts.

According to Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, Office Live will compete with Intuit's QuickBase and stands as an important offering for Microsoft going forward.